Once more he’s managed to make his words sound as they’re imbued with a genuine spirit of sacrifice. Well, after all, he may really feel that way.
So all I say is, “Yes, it’s a lovely habitat. Hopefully I’ll soon be one of its proud and happy citizens.” And I hold back the rest of my comments.
A second later my friend is snoring again, placid as an angel.
I watch him. It’s funny: every time I try to imagine this adipose mass, Narcís, having sexual relations with any living creature, whether it’s an Alien female or his own heroic wife, my brain simply blocks me.
His remarkable success as a condomnaut is the greatest mystery in the Department of Contacts. He takes the job with such a quiet sense of duty, it simply leaves no room for anything else. Libido during Contact? Don’t even dream of it. Asexual Narcís, some sardonically call him. Behind his back, of course. You don’t make a joke like that to the face of someone who weighs in at 300 kilos, even if it’s not exactly all muscle.
The gossips also speculate, half as a joke and half seriously, that Narcís Puigcorbé owes the many profitable trade deals he’s achieved in the course of his brilliant career to the fact that the Alien Contact Specialists wanted to recognize his boundless goodwill, or that they felt sorry for his incompetence as a lover. Or both.
Because as to being a good person, few are in his league. In the orgasm department, however, most doubt that he even felt one when he fathered his children with his wife. Much less gave her one.
To be sure, one of those mocking skeptics—I’m almost ashamed to admit this—is me. Perhaps because he’s never propositioned me, or reacted to my subtle provocations.
Well, let’s not exaggerate. I’m even ready to accept that he and Sonya must enjoy it, at least a little, because they have two sons. Besides, if they didn’t…
Thing is, without sexual pleasure, however twisted it may be, our profession is simply unimaginable.
I’m standing as I’ve done so often and watching the fake Montjuïc in the distance. One of these days I really should get myself together and go there. I’ve been saying this for years. It’s a fairly faithful copy of the original. Barcelona was defined, before the Five Minute War, as a city lying between the sea and the mountain. But it would have been too expensive and fruitless to try and create a convincing replica of the Mediterranean in the enclave. Farmland and pastureland, which alternate like a patchwork quilt in the distance, were much more necessary. You can’t feed fifteen million inhabitants on nothing but hydroponics. Not to mention that the weight of so much water on the force field under the “ground” might have overtaxed the gravity generators, Algolese tech and all.
The best deal that nostalgic environmentalists could cut with the engineers, cattle raisers, and farmers was to install the beautiful string of ponds I see stretching to the horizon.
To be sure, they’re teeming with edible fish. Catalans sure know how to squeeze every last drop of economic juice out of each little detail, even if it seems merely decorative.
Must be in their genes.
Whether or not his fellow Catalans despise him, I’ve always thought that Joaquim Molá was not only a good negotiator but a quick mind for grasping new situations, an imaginative improviser, and, fortunately, someone with few moral scruples, too.
Or a sexual pervert of such magnitude that he makes all of his enterprising heirs in the Nu Barsa Department of Contacts look tiny, regardless of which generation we are lumped with. Though it seems the Qhigarians on the ship with which Quim made Contact weren’t terribly different from us humans.
They had two arms and two legs, at any rate, and when you’re dealing with Contacts, that’s saying a lot.
Molá was also smart enough that, on his triumphant return to Earth minus one cat and one dictionary, but with the addition of the first twenty-five Taraplin hyperengines from the Qhigarians safely stowed in his storage room, he abstained from telling every last detail about the trade meeting in which he had obtained them.
It was only later on, when we were spreading out across space thanks to thousands of those engines, purchased one by one from the “generous” Qhigarians, and humanity was beginning to have more frequent and necessarily closer relations with the Galactic Community, that it became clear how Molá had sealed the deal with those first Qhigarians by…
The journalists of the day, as fond of euphemisms as they were of scandals, referred to it as “sleeping with” a crew member from the Alien ship.
Asked about it shortly thereafter by a famous satirical weekly, Molá said only that it hadn’t been all that difficult: a female’s a female, he told them, Qhigarian or human, and of course he had used a condom!
Many believe that the colloquial term for my trade comes from that brief admission by Quim.
Bad joke, right?
Well, just think of it as theory number 23,456 about the origin of our name. As valid as any of the previous 23,455 theories, in my humble opinion.
And as many more new theories have been thrown out since that time, you know.
The Protocol for First Contact has nothing to say about condoms or other such crudely physical protective barriers or filters.
The number of intelligent species found in the Milky Way comes to twenty-nine thousand so far. That is if we count the wide variety of beings that live on the Qhigarian worldships as belonging to a single species, contrary to the opinions of skeptical exobiologists. Otherwise the total would nearly double.
So if you bear in mind that the list continues to grow by several dozen new species a year (and the older species tell us, with relief, that centuries ago new Contacts numbered in the hundreds per year), such as my newfound Evita Entity, as well as that most of these new civilizations also set off to explore the galaxy in new directions, it’s easy to understand that finding ships, planets, colonies, or representatives of other intelligent species has come to be as unremarkable an event as meeting a neighbor on the moving walkway.
The importance of allowing the accepted norms to regulate such encounters should be obvious.
Much more ancient than humanity, and supposedly Taraplin in origin (since the Qhigarians insist that they inherited this curious custom from their mentors), the odd interspecies etiquette known as the Protocol for First Contact has been well received by almost all the sentient species in the Milky Way.
Briefly stated, here’s how it works: if you meet the representatives of an Alien species off in space for the first time—and if you want to make your peaceful intentions clear, in case some mutually advantageous trading might take place between your two kinds at some future date, as opposed to immediate mutual destruction—you show them that you decline to consider them Aliens, at least for a while.
In other words, you happily “sleep” with them. Or at least pretend you’re doing it happily. Even if afterward, paradoxically, you can’t sleep for days just thinking about it.
On the other hand, if you already know them and you want something from them, that’s simply a Contact, not a First Contact. That makes matters even simpler: whether it’s information, technology, merchandise, or anything else they have that you want, first you negotiate the deal, pay them with something they want—and then, you guessed it: it really helps keep the exchange flowing if you show them one more time that, at least for a while, you will cease to consider them Aliens. So in the name of goodwill and better trade relations present and future, you “sleep” with them, happily or not. Preferably while staying as wide awake as possible.